Several techniques have been developed for connecting to or accessing Internet-based information resources on the World Wide Web (WWW) using conventional graphical user interface (GUI) based Internet browser programs. The availability of any particular Web-site surfing technique depends on where the Internet user finds himself or herself in the Internet browser program at any particular instant of time.
For example, if one is currently at a Web-site (i.e., in a particular HyperText Markup Language (HTML) document), at which there is a highlighted or embedded “link” specifying an Internet address of another Web-site (i.e., another HTML document), then the user can access (i.e., “surf to”) this other Web-site by simply “clicking on” or selecting the highlighted URL with his/her “mouse” in a conventional manner.
A typical process to access that information begins once the user has clicked on the link, or manually print the URL of the information resource into the browser program. More recently, with the growth and ever increasing complexity of the WWW, new services have been widely in use, services such as MSN, I Seek You (“ICQ”), and the like which require intensive interacting with the users of these services. Typically, in order to provide these services, the provider of the service uses one or more servers, with which the users are being in communication in order to receive the requested service. However, in order to allow this communication, the device used by the user is an end device, such as a personal computer (PC), a laptop, etc. which has an IP address that is used for the exchange of message between the user and the target, via the server(s) of the service provider. After the user has defined the service he/she would like to receive, e.g. by entering the WWW address of that service provider, then the browser program automatically connects the user's client system (i.e., Internet access terminal) to the Internet Server computer supporting the selected Web-site (service provider address).
The following references are brought as examples of the vast prior art that exist in connection with the provisioning of services such as those described above, to computer users.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,401,131 describes a system for enabling access to non-HTML files from a web browser. The user requests a non-HTML file from a database using a web browser, and the web browser transmits the request to a server via a HTTP server and module. The server locates and retrieves the document requested while the module translates the document to a format supported by the web browser. The HTTP server communicates the translated file to the web browser over a network. The web browser then presents the translated file to the user.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,732,332 discloses a system of creating Internet web content. Non-web content is received in a web content creation module, which automatically creates web content from the non-web content. An organizational database is then updated with information comprising web content structure information associated with the created web content, incorporating the web content into the web page.
Together with the development of applications and services for computer users, the functionalities of cellular phones have been rapidly developed and quite a few advanced applications and services are now offered to the cellular telephone users. However, the current cellular telephones, whether they are of the second generation or even of the third generation, have not been adapted to support such services, and although quite a few of their users may be interested in receiving services such as ICQ, MSN and other real time applications, still, the users of the currently available cellular devices cannot use these applications. The major reason is that the provider's server(s) that support such an application is adapted to communicate with a computer terminal by exchanging messages therewith. For a number of reasons, for example, as the cellular telephone keyboard has a limited number of keys its user has fewer capabilities to easily engage in real time communications with the application's server(s), this cannot be achieved through the use of cellular devices. One solution to overcome this problem is of course by introducing a full range of new cellular telephone devices. However, in view of the already existing number of devices and are being used and the extra size/weight that might be associated with the insertion of functionalities of a PC/laptop to a cellular telephone, another solution is required.
Another problem associated with the existing solutions is that the telephone user cannot receive indication of messages that await him/her at the server of the application's service provider. For example, if a message is sent to a telephone user who is a subscriber of the MSN service, he/she will not be able to receive any indication at his/her telephone device to promote his/her probing the MSN service to receive that message.